WHAT IS THE ‘TWO-BASIN SOLUTION’ In 2017 when PG&E began relicensing the Potter Valley Project, Congressman Huffman convened a stakeholder group that agreed to work toward a ‘two-basin solution’ based on two ‘co-equal goals’. These goals broadly reflect desires to improve fish passage and habitat in the Eel River while avoiding adverse impacts to water … Read more
About 80 feet behind the PG&E hydropower plant in Potter Valley, gray-green silt-laden water from the Eel River passes through a steel gate and is invisibly transformed. It has become part of the Russian River, which provides water for more than 600,000 people from Redwood Valley to northern Marin County. “Once it passes the gate, … Read more
Click here to read our comments on Sonoma County Water Agency’s Fish Habitat Flows and Water Rights Project prepared by Shute, Mihaly, & Weinberger LLP. Learn more about the project here. A summary of our comments: I. The EIR fails to adequately describe the project II. The EIR fails to analyze or mitigate environmental impacts of … Read more
We need your help. Under orders from the State Water Board and federal fisheries managers, the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) is rewriting the rules that govern stream flows in the Russian River watershed. (Click here to learn more about the Fish Flows Project DEIR) This is important to Friends of the Eel River because … Read more
Tucked away among rolling green hills off the road leading up to the River Rock Casino near Geyserville, a once-beleaguered creek is springing back to life. Situated at the bottom of a slope ravaged by a landslide in the 1980s, part of the creek bed and its immediate surroundings were for years covered with asphalt … Read more
When it rains in Guerneville, people keep a close watch on the Russian River, because rising waters can flood the town. But just upstream, there’s another threat when it rains, found in the large piles of red dirt bordering a creek that runs into the River. They’re part of what remains of the Mount Jackson … Read more
New fish passage opens 11.2 miles of prime habitat for endangered salmon that had been blocked for decades. Salmon conservation achieved a major victory this October as construction finished on a fish passage and stream restoration project in Mill Creek, California. After California Sea Grant identified that a flashboard dam was stopping endangered coho salmon … Read more
Friends of the Eel River seeks the decommissioning and removal of the two century-old dams on the upper mainstem Eel River, and an end to the diversion of Eel River flows to the Russian River. That water is taken from the lower dam (Cape Horn) through a tunnel to Potter Valley and the East Branch … Read more
How would you manage the Russian River for sustainable water supplies and restored fisheries with no water taken from the Eel River? By: David Keller, Bay Area Director, Friends of the Eel River. Originally published in The Eel River Reporter 2013 The people and agencies who manage the Russian River have been using water diverted … Read more
In July, roughly 1,000 rural Sonoma County residents overflowed classrooms and small meeting chambers at five informational sessions convened by the State Water Resources Control Board. It would be hard to exaggerate many attendees’ outrage. At one meeting, two men got in a fistfight over whether to be “respectful” to the state and federal officials … Read more